


Sole Repelleris

by drarrymehome



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Harry Potter, Bookish Draco Malfoy, Case Fic, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Post-Hogwarts, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24152254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drarrymehome/pseuds/drarrymehome
Summary: Harry's case leads him to the Malfoy family library. Forcing himself to get over the embarrassment of asking Draco Malfoy for help, Harry comes out with a lot more than he bargained for...
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Kudos: 12





	Sole Repelleris

Harry’s hands are sweating as he knocks on the Manor door. It’s been, well, _years_ since he last saw Malfoy and he fully expects to be turfed out once Malfoy realises exactly who is at the door.

It’s a shock when Malfoy himself opens the door, rather than the house elf Harry expected. He hasn’t changed much since the last time Harry saw him – jawline a touch sharper, cheeks a little less full. The biggest difference Harry can see is his hair. It’s much longer now, reaching down to his shoulders. The top half is pulled back from his face, emphasising how sharp his features still are.

“Potter?” Harry wonders if Malfoy realises his posture straightened stiffly when he registered him. “Whatever it is I have nothing to do with it!”

Harry frowns. Why would Malfoy think Harry was here because he was in trouble? Is Malfoy… up to something? Then it clicks that he’s wearing full auror robes which, incidentally, are far too heavy for the heat of the day, and he probably cuts a foreboding figure.

“No! No, it’s nothing like that.” He scratches the back of his head nervously. “I actually was hoping for your help…” He tries very hard not to bite his lip, a habit he has developed that drives Ginny mad, but he can’t quite manage it. Malfoy’s eyes flicker to Harry’s lips and narrow, but he makes no comment.

“My help.” He repeats flatly. “Why would I be able to help you? I’m entirely the wrong sort.” Harry doesn’t blame Malfoy for being dubious, in fact he almost laughs at the reference to one of their earliest interactions all those years ago, but he really could use Malfoy’s help, so he tries not to be antagonistic.

“I thought you were exactly the right sort, unless there’s something you’d like to tell me?” Harry cocks an eyebrow at Malfoy who looks suitably uncomfortable.

“Nope. Nothing to tell you.” His voice is a smidge too high and he talks too quickly, and Harry can’t tell why that might be. “I suppose you’d better come in.” The door swings open wider and Malfoy steps to the side to allow Harry to pass. As he steps through the doorway, Harry’s shoulder brushes against Malfoy’s chest. He never did manage to catch up to his height, although he likes to think the wide shoulders he gained from all the auror training more than compensate.

He waits politely for Malfoy to close the door behind him and lead him into the house. Despite the bright day, the interior is particularly dim, and Harry thinks it must be pretty depressing to live in a place like this. Especially with all the memories Malfoy must have.

When he is led down the long hallway towards the back of the house, he can’t help but notice the way Malfoy moves. It might be because Harry has rarely seen him in anything but long wizard robes, but he’s never noticed before how long and lean Malfoy’s legs are. It’s hard not to notice now that he’s wearing such tight trousers anyway – it’s a wonder he can move at all. Now that he’s looking closer, he realises that actually, Draco Malfoy is wearing _jeans_ of all things. And the hair that is pulled back from his face is actually neatly plaited down the back.

He’s not so sure it’s just his robes leaving him hot and flustered anymore.

Malfoy leads him to the back of the house into a large living room. There’s probably a fancy name for it like a parlour, or a drawing room, or something, but Harry’s never got to grips with all of that. It’s a very fancy room with ornately gilded sofas, armchairs, and coffee table, and he’s sure the art on the walls is original. A pang of longing strikes him suddenly. Not for the Manor, but for the history, and the long line of ancestry Malfoy is surrounded by all day that Harry doesn’t and will never have. It must be nice to belong to something as established as that.

“Where are my manners? Let me take your robes.” Malfoy seems overly polite considering he has hated Harry for the better part of two decades, and Harry fails to stifle his laugh as he removes the outer layer he’s required to wear when he goes anywhere on official business.

“What?” Malfoy freezes with the deep crimson robes draped over his arm.

“Oh, come off it, Malfoy, it’s only me. I’m not about to hex you.” Harry tries to lighten the mood but Malfoy only frowns. It makes two perfectly symmetrical eleven lined between his eyebrows that weren’t there the last time Harry saw him. For some unknown reason, Harry loves them.

“If you say so…” Harry doesn’t like how uncertain Malfoy seems. Does he really think Harry is here because he’s in trouble? “Would you like tea?” Harry nods, and Draco disappears out of the room faster than Harry can say ‘yes please’. He would have thought a house elf would bring tea for them, but since there wasn’t one to answer the door either…

Harry is examining a painting that caught his eye when Malfoy returns, a tea tray floating behind him. It’s of a young girl, maybe eight or ten, with long dark hair plaited and hanging down her left side to her waist. She’s wearing a scarlet winter coat with large black buttons, and sitting portrait style with her hands clasped neatly in her lap. Although her posture is prim and proper, something in her eyes suggests a wildness about her.

Just as Harry is beginning to think it’s muggle portrait, the girl turns and looks down her nose at him like she’s just found mud caked to her shoe. Seems about right.

“You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you that was my Aunt Bella when she was a girl. It’s a Dutch commission, one of my favourites actually.” Harry jumps when Malfoy’s voice is much closer than he expected. There are many questions he wants to ask. Was she really once an innocent girl like the one in this picture? Or was it a great effort to have her sit for her portrait? Is it Malfoy’s favourite because it’s of his aunt? Or does he like it for the use of light and colour that drew Harry’s attention?

“Where are the house elves?” He blurts out instead. Malfoy takes a step back and Harry can’t tell if it’s an involuntary action or whether he hit a nerve.

“I don’t have elves at the Manor anymore Potter.” There’s an iciness in his tone that shuts down any follow up questions, although Harry has plenty. He turns away from the painting and sits down for tea with Malfoy. Something he never thought possible.

“So,” Malfoy begins brusquely after he has poured their tea, “what kind of help is it that you need?”

Harry explains as much of his case as he’s been given dispensation to share. There has been a string of incidents of an unknown curse which causes any, and all, light to burn the victim’s skin. At first, the DMLE had thought the only offending light was direct sunlight, so naturally shut the victims inside until they could figure out how to fix it. However, it quickly became clear that it was all light sources. It not only meant that the patients were becoming weaker and their eyesight was deteriorating, it was also impossible to monitor them properly in the pitch black. Harry had exhausted every avenue, including Hermione, and had found no trace of a curse like it.

“You need the Manor library,” Malfoy finished for him. They had been through a whole pot of tea and then another whilst Harry had explained to Malfoy what research he had done and what he had found so far, which was practically nothing.

“Please? You don’t even need to help really; you could just leave me in there. I won’t touch anything but the books I promise. But since your father helped the Ministry a lot back in the day, it knows the library quite well…” Malfoy tenses at the mention of his father and Harry thinks he might well have just ruined his only chance at getting a look at the Malfoy tomes.

“Oh, I see. So, because my father used blackmail and bribery, you think it’s ok to show up here and demand access to my family’s old, and fragile I might add, library whenever it pleases you? And what? You’ll lock me up if I say no? Obstructing the course of justice, I dare say!” Harry has no idea where this is coming from and it upset him to see Malfoy looking like a deer caught in the headlights.

“What? No! Don’t put words into my mouth. I wouldn’t be here unless I really needed to be!” Harry winces when his words came out very differently than he intended. Malfoy looks furious. There’s a vein throbbing down the side of his neck which is flushed bright red. His eyes however are glacial as he stares Harry down.

“I see. Well, things must be bad if you’re coming to someone like me for help. I bet it took you at least a day just to stop retching at the mere thought of coming here. I’m so sorry to disappoint.” Malfoy’s words are venom. Surely Harry hadn’t gotten it so wrong when he thought to come here. Surely Malfoy wouldn’t turn him away.

“Malfoy, please. People will die.” It’s manipulative of him to say it, he knows, but it’s not wrong. He can see the moment the gears start turning in Malfoy’s mind. He places the cup gently on its saucer and sets it down on the coffee table. He straightens up his shirt as he sits back up, like he means business.

“Very well then. If you’re done with your tea, I will take you to the library. But under no circumstances are you to be left alone with the manuscripts. Not only are you woefully unequipped to deal with the cataloguing system, I guarantee you have no clue what to look for.”

It’s very wrong of Harry to smile given the circumstances, but he does enjoy seeing Malfoy in his element again. He imagines that if Malfoy had been a muggle, he’d have made a perfect university professor. Oxbridge educated of course – a Malfoy wouldn’t stand for less.

Harry is fortunate in that the library is on the ground floor of the Manor, but less fortunate in that it’s at completely the opposite end from the entrance. It’s probably a good thing Malfoy won’t leave him alone with the books because four corridors down and he’s utterly lost. Finally, Malfoy leads him to a large room with only one small window, and walls and cabinets crammed to the ceiling with books. Many of them are old leather-bound prints from a century ago, but in fact many of them seem to have been created long before the invention of the printed word.

Harry can see why Malfoy wouldn’t trust him with these in the slightest.

“Wow, this place is amazing,” Harry says as he steps closer to the middle of the room. It’s a long and thin space, about half the length of the Great Hall – no mean feat considering the Manor is far from a castle.

“Thank you, Potter. It’s good to know that a thousand years of my family’s collection is up to your impeccable standards.” Harry doesn’t know why Malfoy has to be so acerbic all the time, but he can’t afford to let this opportunity pass.

“Right. So where exactly should we- woah- wa- hm, um,” Harry’s sentence descends into incoherent babbling when he turns to see Malfoy rolling the sleeves of his shirt up. His forearms are as pale as the rest of him but seem indecently powerful. His veins are raised with the warm weather and they run down the length of his arms to where they narrow into delicately thin wrists and long hands.

‘I’m sorry? I’m afraid I don’t understand ba-” He breaks off as he follows Harry’s gaze towards his arms. It confuses Harry when he starts scrabbling to unfold the sleeves he’s just rolled to his elbows, until he realises that Malfoy thinks he’s staring at something else entirely. In seconds he has crossed the room and grabbed hold of Malfoy’s left forearm.

“Please don’t do that. Don’t hide it from me.” He looks into Malfoy’s eyes properly for the first time. It’s possibly the closest he has ever been to Malfoy’s face before, and he can see that the glimmering grey of his irises are lined with a darker graphite ring. There’s even a small smattering of freckles across his nose that Harry is convinced he must have been hiding at school because he absolutely would have noticed that.

Malfoy clears his throat awkwardly and Harry releases his hold of him. He turns away, embarrassed that Malfoy caught him staring and thinking about the pins and needles sensation he now has in his palm down to his fingertips. Now isn’t the time to get distracted; there are lives at stake.

“You said the victims have an adverse reaction to sunlight,” Malfoy says gruffly, his voice noticeable uneven. Harry is please when he keeps his sleeves at his elbows and walks over to a bookcase in the corner. It’s not easy to work out whether he’s doing it because he’s looking for something or if it’s because he wants to get away from Harry.

“Yes. But not just sunlight. All light.” Harry qualifies. “And electrical!” Although it’s unlikely anything in this library will mention electricity.

“Alright. Well, it’s best to start with curses obviously.” With a flick of his wand, Malfoy sends a stack of books zooming across the room to a large wooden table with a green leather inlay. Harry wants to point out that he doesn’t need to be able to use a cataloguing system to do that, but he keeps his mouth shut. Something in the back of his mind tells him that Malfoy might be keener on helping him than he’s letting on.

Harry strides over to the pile as Malfoy makes a circuit of the room, occasionally adding new books and taking some away. It will take them hours to sort through all of this, and surprisingly, that idea doesn’t bother Harry at all.

“Uh, Malfoy,” Harry says as he opens the first of the books. It turns out to be a handwritten manuscript.

“Yes?” Malfoy calls from the far end of the room. All Harry can see of him is the gleam of his white-blond hair in the sunlight coming in from the only window. It makes him look angelic. How ironic.

“These are written in Latin.”

“Yes, I am aware of the contents of my own library.”

“But I don’t speak Latin.”

“Well, then. You’re lucky you have me, aren’t you?” Harry doesn’t need to be able to see Malfoy to picture the broad smirk on his face.

Two hours later and Harry is about to lose his mind. Malfoy has given him the few English volumes that he thinks are relevant, but even those are heavy reading and some of them are in such old English that they may as well be French, or, in the case of one in particular dedication to disembowelling curses, German.

But it’s not just the research that’s causing Harry discomfort. Malfoy’s head is bent impossibly close to his own as he pores over thick Latin script. Whenever Harry glances over at the pages before Malfoy, he notices that there are as many letters written in superscript above the main text as there are in the actual words themselves.

“Malfoy,”

“Yeah?”

“Why are there so many extra letters?” Harry has given up all pretence of working now, and is actually ashamed of how much he’s enjoying watching Malfoy read manuscripts and write notes in his elegant and looping handwriting.

“Huh? Oh. Latin scripts use a lot of abbreviations. Writing materials were rare and expensive so they often tried to use as little space as possible. There are a finite number of ending so they used to abbreviate them with single letters in superscript at the end, see there?” He points to a tiny ‘m’ at the end of one of the lines. Harry nods but Malfoy isn’t even looking.

“Sometimes with small words like et, that means and, they just did a sort of scribble rather than a real letter. I’ll show you next time I find one. People have been studying this for years. It’s called palaeography – the art of reading manuscripts. You should see a Merovingian script, it’s practically illegible.” Harry has no idea what on earth a Merovingian script is, but he could listen to Malfoy say long words like palaeography all day long.

“Where did you learn all of this?” Harry asks him. They certainly never learnt any of it at Hogwarts, which seems like a bit of an oversight now that he thinks about it.

“My mother was particularly skilled at it, but I learned most of what I know now at university. I took an entire degree in it actually. It was rather fun.”

“You went to university?!” How had that escaped Harry’s attention?

“Oh, yes. The Ministry were dubious when I first applied for muggle identification so I could enroll, but I constricted a particularly watertight argument about why my studying amongst muggles was actually beneficial not only for their, and my own, reputation, but that it would also do wonders for cooperation efforts.” He scribbles some more notes down and then turns the page delicately with both hands. It amazes Harry that someone usually so bold and dismissive could also be so gentle and careful. It was like seeing a whole other person.

Harry was floored by this information. Malfoy had gone to a muggle university, which meant a minimum of three years, and Harry hadn’t known?

“When was this?”

A lock of hair falls into Malfoy’s eyes. His plait has slowly been unravelling as the afternoon wore on. It takes serious effort not to tuck it behind his ear for him, but he finds it equally fascinating to watch Malfoy do it himself. He hasn't even been looking up from his work to speak to Harry, but he doesn't mind at all.

“I graduated…what? Two years ago now? I’m a translator mostly, although I am working on a paper at the minute. Between Latin and French I’m quite useful to historians. And a couple from the English department but I try not to help them. They’re practically the enemy.”

“I had no idea. I guess I didn’t really think about what you do all day…” It’s then that Malfoy finally looks up.

“And why would you?” He gives Harry a piercing look that makes him think Malfoy knows him better than he would like. Harry fumbles around what words to say in what order when Malfoy saves him. “Not all of us posh twats sit around in our massive houses ordering servants around all day. The novelty wears off by the time you turn ten.”

Harry stares at him in disbelief until he realises that Malfoy is in fact joking. The eruption of laughter in a little more violent than the subtle joke warrants but once Harry has started, he sets Malfoy off too. Each time one of them manages to control the laughter the other one starts up again and so the vicious cycle goes. When their sides hurt too much to countenance even a single ‘ha’, they lapse back into silence and Malfoy goes back to his work.

Eventually, Harry’s knees become stiff. On a routine op last year, he’d been hit by a poorly aimed jinx which dislocated his right kneecap and it had never been the same since. Since he was neither use nor ornament to the research, he gets up and does a lap of the room, or a turn about the room as they would have said in the olden days. The kind of days when this room would have been considered modern.

He’s just made it to the far end of the room by the window and is enjoying the view of an old oak tree when Malfoy stands up quickly, his chair clattering to the floor and making Harry jump and pull out his wand automatically.

“Aha! By George I think I’ve got it!” Harry is utterly bemused that Malfoy knows that reference but dutifully returns to Malfoy’s side. His eyes are filled with glittering excitement and for a moment Harry thinks he looks genuinely beautiful, but he pushes the thought aside to concentrate on the reason he’s here.

“What is it?” Harry tries not to get his hopes up but he thinks of the poor little boy who called out in the dark for ‘the nice Mister Potter man’ who was going to make everything better and his heart constricted in his chest.

“You see this section here?” Malfoy points to a line of illegible text but Harry just nods so that he can hurry the explanation. “It refers to the Sole Repelleris curse.” Harry can see that he has also written it in his own handwriting next to the manuscript, although Malfoy pronounced it like so-lay when it’s written with an e. There’s a funny flat line over the top of the e which clearly means something to him.

“I don’t speak Latin but that definitely sounds something like solar and repel.” Malfoy’s eyes brighten even more and he’s almost bouncing on the balls of his feet. Harry has always known Malfoy is practically a genius, but he’s never really seen it to this extent before.

“Of course, it’s written in the passive as you can see by the -ris which makes it slightly complicated since it’s not an active curse but there must be a work around. Since sole is in the ablative it suggests that it’s the sun being repelled, which makes the victim the repellent. Very important of course when considering the nature of a counter-curse…” Harry has literally no idea what Malfoy is talking about but it sounds amazing.

“Wait a second,” he interrupts, “you said when considering the nature of a counter-curse. There isn’t one here?” He feels like his lungs deflate of their own accord.

“Ah. Well, no, there isn’t. But I’m sure I could come up with one in the next twenty-four hours. The intent is pretty clear, and I know which direction to engineer a counter-curse from. It just takes time to perfect the wand movement and the right emphasis. These old spells are temperamental when performed with wands.”

“So, you can’t do it now,” Harry says slowly. Some of the light dies in Malfoy’s eyes.

“No, Potter. I’m sorry. I should have thought. Sometimes when I get stuck into something I get carried away. Of course you’ll be thinking about how you can help these people – it was insensitive of me.” The rapidity of his apology makes Harry wish he had seen more of Malfoy in the past few years. He seems a much more rounded person now.

“It’s ok. I mean, you’ve done more in one afternoon than I’ve managed in two weeks so I shouldn’t complain.” By now the sun is starting to set and Harry realises he never informed the office that he would be gone so long. The clock on the far wall is about to strike six and he realises it’s too late to send a patronus now anyway.

“Well, I should have done more all the same.” Malfoy seems genuine when he says it.

“Right. Well, uh, I guess I should leave you to it?” Harry would have made to leave but he knows he has no chance of finding the room they had tea in where his outer robes were left. He glances at Malfoy and he seems a little deflated – his shoulders are slumped in a way they definitely weren’t before.

“Of course, I shouldn’t have kept you so long, I’m sure you have very important auror-ing to do.” Harry wants to point out that auror-ing is definitely not a real word, but he supposes that next to Malfoy he doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

“Um, yeah I guess.”

“Unless- unless of course you might like to stay for dinner?” Malfoy doesn’t seem able to meet Harry’s eye as he asks, and Harry sort of finds it adorable that the man who not five minutes ago was a pillar of authority as he discussed Latin grammar, is now reduced to a bashful schoolboy.

“I suppose I might like that.” Malfoy’s surprised smile is like nothing Harry has ever seen.

It’s definitely not what he expected when he knocked nervously on the Manor door earlier that day.


End file.
